


Countdown

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 08:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the first day of the new year and Debra Morgan is practically swimming in blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Countdown

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the hour between when I watched the S7 finale and the S8 opener, because I needed a version where everything wasn't about to go to shit. Also archived at [dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/34921.html).

It’s the last day of the year, a minute to midnight and the crowd has doubled while her world imploded. She follows her brother, numb and dumb. People heave and pulse around her in a suffocating mass.

 _Ten_ , they start as she walks through them, but all their unison isn’t enough to drown out the shots and screams that still ring in her head.

 _Nine_ , she slips her hand into the crook of Dexter’s arm. She can feel her molecules rearranging themselves, splitting her seams apart as if the only way she can be here, now, is to become someone else.

 _Eight_ , there was no time. All these people are counting down around her, but there was no time for that, no time for thought, not even ten fucking seconds. Her fingers clench involuntarily, sinking into her brother’s skin.

 _Seven_ , he glances back. It’s the briefest motion, a slight snag of her eyes with his own, but it’s enough to bring back the sight of him pleading, the sticky silver knife dropping from his hands. The _understanding_ on his face, forgiving her in advance, as he begged for the ending.

 _Six_ , her stomach jolts again in the same sick way, telling her anew that she never would or could. Her cells have built themselves around this knowledge.

 _Five_ , there are stabbing pains radiating down her arm to her fingertips. It seems so ridiculous a thing to focus on, a single broken bone when there’s so much destruction lying around them. But her fingers are too weak to properly close around Dexter’s elbow,

 _Four_ , and he’s slipping away from her, gliding through the crowd on a path she was never meant to follow. Or maybe she’s the one that’s slipping, downwards, against the slick, blood-drenched ceramic, pulled by the sucking hole at the end of the tub; downwards, into an ocean so dark she can no longer tell if it’s water or not.

 _Three_ , he slows, turns, and secures her hand with his own.

 _Two_ , the trembling starts when they stop, rippling outward from the deepest part of her bones. Trying to still them makes it worse. This is her core; indifferent, treacherous. Muscles and tissue that have solidified over thirty-three years for the sole purpose of holding her up now crumble like chalk when she needs them most.

 _One_ , her eyes sting – here is the finish line, the end of the world. All she can do is await the inevitable, but the inevitable will be a flood and she’s done with fluids for tonight. She bites instead, as hard as she can, on the lip she’s drawn up into her mouth, until it too is slippery with metallic warmth.

The sharp tang of cordite is back in her nose. Her ears are full of explosions, the older brothers of her own futile noise. And she will not, she _will not_ , but it’s happening anyway, a tsunami started by the tiniest, deepest shudder, spilling out over her cheeks to creep into the corners of her mouth and mingle with the putrid taste there. The sky is yellow, green, red; a deep, burning red that lingers against the backs of her eyelids, streaking and dripping over the black night above her, until it’s lost behind the blur of tears and tremors.

It is the first day of a new year. There are hands on her back, pressed against the curves under her shoulder blades, buoying her up in the sticky, dark ocean while her atoms rebuild themselves. They’re hands she has known her whole life, hands she’s hated and loved by turns but never really understood until now, when they whisper to her skin, _I’d do everything to keep you safe_. She looks to the sky again, but the lights are hidden behind the face from her nightmares and dreams. Her brother and not her brother. She wants to see the red again, wants to point to it and tell his hands, _this is what I did for you, isn’t that enough_?

It is the first day of a new year. Dexter’s arms are around her. He hasn’t had the right words in what seems like years; now he’s telling her it will be okay in the only way that’s left to him. His lips brush against her forehead, her nose, the trails of salt on her cheeks. She has no idea how many broken bodies he’s cleaned up, just that she is his latest. His mouth claims hers, washing away the taste of blood, lingering until her bones have calmed and the tears have dried invisibly on her skin.

It is the first day of a new year. The explosions have stopped. The tremors have stopped. A black-red ocean is still roaring but she has survived its tide. There are arms around her, and hands on her skin, promising her she will survive again when the tide returns.

Debra opens her eyes and greets the next year’s sky. The heart she knows best is beating against her own. The face she’d give everything to protect is still here. The only red to be seen is in the coloured lights sparkling above their heads.

_fin._


End file.
